Diana the Valkyrie's Newsletter - January 2001
A hard man is good to beat
Well, here we are at last, the end of the second millenium. I hope everyone had a great Christmas. I did - lots of turkey, and stuffing. And right at the end of the month, we even had an inch of snow!
Galleries added this month.
Stories added this month.
Nothing new.
Movies added this month.
Some new programmes were added this month.
Mega problems with Anita. On December 7th, the problems began, with Anita crashing. I brought her up again, and she crashed again. And again. And that was the start of a long week.
The obvious candidate for the problem was hardware. So, we replaced the memory - it didn't help. We tried replacing everything. Literally - at one point, we were running on a whole different computer, and it still crashed. Then I brought the whole thing across the Atlantic, and ran it from here, and it still crashed. You can read the unhappy saga on the Newsthumbs Message Board, because I tried to keep people in touch with that was happening.
Eventually, I decided to separate the data gathering from the web serving, so now the load is divided between two computers. And the situation seems more stable, but I don't know exactly what the problem was, so I can't say I've fixed it, just that it seems to be better now. This means that Anita crashes a bit less, and is quicker to bring up after a crash.
But on December 30, Kirty crashed, and it took some hours to bring her back online, because there's a lot on Kirty.
And now some good news. I've brought two more servers online. The one you can see is vnews04. If you go to that server you can see more NewsThumbs. February to September is there, and July to current is on Anita.
The way it works is slightly unusual. When you ask vnews04 for a file, if it doesn't have it, then it has to go get it from Judy, who is a big 650 gigabyte monster with all the files. But once it's gotten it from Judy, the next time you, or anyone else, asks for that file, it's already there.
The effect is that it's a bit slower the first time a file is requested. The reason for doing it that way, is that it means that I don't have to ship that big file server from the UK to the US, because it's always a risk when you ship a big computer, that the shipper might drop it. And although they'll pay for a replacement computer if you insure, I'm not going to be able to replace that data. But I don't want to run it directly out of the UK, because bandwidth (file transfer) costs me about 15 times as much.
Joan (the main server that you know as www.thevalkyrie.com) is 62% filled. So there's no urgency, but I do have to start thinking about a replacement. My current plan is to replace Joan with a pair of big machines; copies of each other, so if one has a hiccup, I can switch over to the other one very quickly.
The picture count is about 5 million now.
To be precise the current figure is
And now there's another 7.5 million on the other server,
- to be precise the current figure is
The Elena Sieple videos are quite popular! I think it's her girl-next-door-with-muscles look. There's three videos of her now, look in the Diana the Valkyrie video shop.
By Wessex Man
Saint Aignan-sur-Cher, France -- Bulgarian Stefka Ulanova, 38, is one of Europe's more muscular women but she's had little in common with bodybuilding apart from lifting weights.
I met her by chance recently while on vacation in the Loire Valley. The former world sculling champion and Olympic gold medallist is now working in France as assistant sports director and rowing coach at a large co-ed school on the River Cher about 150 miles southwest of Paris.
Her English is difficult and French only slightly better. "Am 'ere and I love it. France is somewhere very different from where I grow up in Starazagora," she told me in an interview.
Boldness on my part led to our meeting. I happened to be listening to a brilliant small choral ensemble in the parish church of the medieval town of Saint Aignan. And there on a seat in front of me I noticed Ulanova's remarkable profile. She was in long sleeves and long dress but her athletic structure was strikingly apparent.
I managed to start talking to her in the interval while most of the audience were wandering outside on the floodlit ramparts of the old chateau above the church. I found out who she was. I remembered her from Olympic images in the 1980s when she was a contemporary of Jarmilla Kratochvilova, the Czech 800 metre Miss Hercules, and the other muscular East European women of that time.
Ulanova had a friend with her. Her partner as I soon realised. This girl Catherine, a French athlete with a track background, proved an excellent interpreter. The couple clearly thought and moved in unison, each shielding the other.
WE AGREE TO MEET IN A BOATHOUSE
I realised there was no time to waste so I said bluntly that I'd like to interview them both for a website newsletter about weight training and athletics. I didn't press the bodybuilding link because I could see they probably came from very different sports cultures.
Well next day I drove over to Ulanova's school. She'd told me to park by a large boathouse used for rowing craft on the river. Through the car window I saw a pair of unusually muscular female legs walking towards me; classic calves and bold quads alive with virile muscle separations. This was Ulanova. She greeted me with a strong controlled handshake. Catherine smiled distantly.
We entered a little office in a shed behind the boathouse and through an open door I could see weight training equipment in a room beyond. Ulanova took off her anorak and we sat round a table.
At that point my senses began to respond. All I could see were Ulanova's muscled shoulders, her ripely veined biceps and the proud thrust of her pectorals. Furthermore Catherine was holding her hand.
SHE DESCRIBES WHAT HAPPENED IN BULGARIA
"I suppose you want to hear what happened to me when Bulgaria ran out of money," said Ulanova in a sudden initiative. "Well I'll tell you." Catherine was whispering in her ear. She repeated in English was Ulanova had just said.
"No," I replied, " I'd rather start with your training experiences in the 1980s when you became so successful. Can you describe your regime when you were training for the Olympics ? What steroids did you take ?"
Suddenly I thought I was lost. Ulanova's attentive gaze became blank, almost hostile. She talked to Catherine in a low voice. I couldn't help noticing the muscled beauty of her neck and traps when she turned her head.
After a while she looked at me. "I'm sorry I will not talk about those things. I really have nothing to say about this. Anyway I have new job, new life."
But she agreed to be drawn on the collapse of the Bulgarian economy in the 1990s. "Our rowing programmes were disbanded. We couldn't afford to attend foreign competitions. I had to find something else to do."
That 'something else' turned out to be the proverbial fate worse than death. Ulanova is a distinctive Slav beauty as well as an androgynous sportswoman. Her smile and profile must turn heads in any crowded street.
Along with several other jobless female athletes she'd accepted a proposition to work in Salonika, in northern Greece, about 200 miles south of her Bulgarian home town. The Greek employer, who claimed to be a hotel and restaurant owner, collected the women in a minibus and rattled them off down the bad roads of that region towards their destination.
STAVROS LOSES THE USE OF AN ARM
When they reached the 'hotel' in Salonika they found it was a call girl bar near the port. The owner, apparently called Stavros, showed them all to a bedroom with mattresses on the floor and locked the door.
He little realised his mistake. The athletes escaped through a window and sought him out in his office down below. Ulanova said she took the lead. "I get him from behind, round the head -- I grab his wrist and push it up his back almost to his neck...He never stopped screaming."
She said two more years went by while she gained a sports instructor diploma from an Institute of Physical Culture run by the Bulgarian government. She managed to work her ticket into professional status, albeit without any real income.
ULANOVA DISPLAYS HER MATURE MUSCLES
Our interview then took a new turn. I produced a seamstress tape measure from my pocket and put it on the table. Catherine seemed to understand and her eyes shone with a big smile. "You want to measure Stefka's muscles, her beezeps?" she queried.
I was allowed to tighten the tape round her flexed upper arm and found 16-1/4 inches. She held the flex for several moments -- the three of us feeling silenced, moved and elated. Ulanova raised no objection when I offered a rubber tourniquet to dramatise her bicep definition. She flexed the arm with stunning effect while the serpentine band contracted between her aroused bicep and the powerful ribbed muscling of her shoulder. The cocked bicep fibres were stressed and defined in magical profile.
I then pointed to her statuesque neck. Ulanova's cheeks reddened briefly but she tossed her head and said "O.K." Her collar size was big for a woman -- nearly 16" relaxed and about one inch more when expanded with her head back. My thoughts turned to Bev Francis, perhaps the only other female to develop a classic neck profile. Both Bev and Ulanova boast necks which can expand to match the width of their heads.
Wandering into the weights room we found a loaded bar across a bench. Without a word Ulanova lay on her back and began pressing a steady 12 reps with a managerable 80 kg (176 lbs). The movement seemed all too easy for a muscular 5' 8" woman weighing about 165 pounds.
Our interview was highly charged while it lasted. But it ended abruptly when the school's portly head teacher burst into the boat house. He was showing round parents who wanted to meet the Olympic rowing mermaid from Eastern Europe.
N.B. Some details in the above scenario have been changed at Ulanova's request. She's new in her job and understandably wary of random media exposure.
We currently have six running; Nicole Bass, Andrulla Blanchette, Sheila Burgess, Christine Envall, Marilyn Perret and Julia Santana.
Nicole is very ill right now. She has pancreatitis, and has been in hospital for some weeks. Read the Message Boards for updates. She's not expecting to get out of hospital until February.
SceSport is offering a Wieder "Victory" Chocolate Glutamine EFX meal replacement shake to every person who joins their 1 year membership. Each packet: (68.5g) , 250 calories, 29g carbs, 30g protein, L-Glutamine 6g, Creatine Monohydrate 2g.
You must enter coupon code # DV145 when signing up for the one year membership to get your free Chocolate, so that they know you've come from Diana the Valkyrie.
People in the chatroom have always said that you need a dictionary in this chatroom. Well, Clepsy can help you with difficult words now. Just ask /whatis whellbarrow or whatever word you need, and Clepsy will tell you what the word means, and how to pronounce it.
This is possibly the only web site on the internet with a talking clock who is also a dictionary.
Member | Posts |
| gaily304 | 6940 |
| mike1965 | 4397 |
| Blast222 | 4382 |
| jabb6328 | 4222 |
| ginny2442 | 4193 |
| Diana the Valkyrie | 3881 |
| TomNine | 3239 |
| mit19237 | 3223 |
| mrk001 | 3182 |
| cry2cin | 2718 |
| lpdorman69 | 2388 |
| 000wlt | 2378 |
| 007tko | 2187 |
| steve8888 | 1912 |
| tex666 | 1817 |
| stu666 | 1786 |
| boomer444 | 1562 |
| geo001 | 1371 |
| hiram2000 | 1362 |
| stone001 | 1346 |
Gaily reclaims her rightful place as Top Chatter, with Mad scientist, Blasterman, Jabber and Ginny battling it out for second place.
I added a "Total Messages this month" counter, it's at the top of the main message board page.
Most posted Board of the month | Poster of the month | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Plenty of controversy this month in TomNine, FBB, Politics, Vi's and Diana's message boards. The chess board has been getting a year-by-year history of chess. | Leaving Patrick's chess history aside, and UtahJazz's chess postings (you might ask me why there seems to be so much chess on this web site) the Top Poster is clearly Jabber. |
Mavis is counting the number of times the message list is checked for each board, and the number of times that a posting is read. This gives a very different picture from the one above. The chess board seems to be write-only; it's being posted to, but not read.
Most listed Board of the month | Most read Board of the month | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Fistman's discussions on which are the best pictures on the web make the most often listed board, althought TomNine's Tussles aren't far behind. | TomNine beats Fistman in the number of times messages are read. |
And the answers to last month's quiz ...
1. The liquid was water. Not, as most people thought, milk. And Jim Furdmangler's answer was completely wrong. Shame on you, Jim, for even thinking such a thing.
2. A lemon. You can't get juice out of a banana, and cucumbers aren't yellow.
I checked the site statistics that Sandra counts up each night.
At the end of December 2000, there were about 309,000 pictures (15.0 gigabytes), 40 gigabytes of video, 4200 text files (mostly stories) and a total of about 55 gigabytes.
On Anita, the Newsthumbs server, there's the NewsThumbs, which is another 5.9 million pictures in 336 gigabytes and 7.9 million text files, a total of 358 gigabytes. Plus another 7.5 million pictures on the older NewsThumbs server